


Time Binds

by killer_quean



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s03e10 Blink, Epistolary, F/F, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killer_quean/pseuds/killer_quean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally Sparrow's impossible, cross-temporal, epistolary romance with Kathy Nightingale. Because linear time is *so* heteronormative.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Binds

“This stubborn lingering of pastness (whether it appears as anachronistic style, as the reappearance of bygone events in the symptom, or as arrested development) is a hallmark of queer affect: a 'revolution' in the old sense of the word, as a turning back.” -Elizabeth Freeman, _Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories_

 

Sally Sparrow lived a normal life for three days. She ran the shop and thought only about the shop. She went out to the pub. She cooked dinner with Larry and talked about how next time they'd add less rosemary and cook the onions a bit longer, thinking only about the rosemary and the onions the whole time. Larry held her hand and she thought, well, this is how things begin, and this is what we all wait for, and this is what we know how to do. She held his hand. She wondered if he would kiss her. She went out with her friends to the pub and they talked about how Larry might kiss her and they laughed a lot and teased each other like friends do. For three days, time was a straight line.

And then she was on the floor of the kitchen, inconsolable. She had sat down with a cup of tea and reached behind her, to where she kept the folder, but the shelf was empty. She had given it to the Doctor, of course, and as she had watched him run off down the street three days before, she had thought that her time with the Weeping Angels was over. The last thing had slid into place, and there was no need to reread the letter and the list, to run her hands over the photographs of the Angels and of Kathy. She thought she would no longer feel as if the dust of Wester Drumlins still settled on everything around her. And for three days, that was true.

And then she was on the floor of the kitchen, slumped against the humming refrigerator, weeping because she needed to hold Kathy's letter in her hands and her hands were empty, and the emptiness was as stubborn and blank as time itself. She realized, as the forgotten tea cooled on the counter, that she had not been living with this folder for so long just to solve the mystery of the Doctor. She was still there that evening when Larry called. He asked her if she'd like to have dinner with him. She said she wasn't feeling well. She sat down at her desk and began writing a letter.

 

4 March 2008

Dear Kathy,

I don't know what to do but write to you. You wrote to me so long ago--how could I not answer? It's hard to know which Kathy I'm writing to. Are you the Kathy I remember? If you are, then it's 1921 for you, and you're alive, like the characters in old novels are alive. You don't read them and think they're all dead already. Well, sometimes I do, but you always said that was weird. So in a way, you're alive.

But of course, you're also dead. It's not 1921--at least, not for me--and so you've already lived this whole life I want to ask you so much about, and you died as someone I didn't even get a chance to know. I look one way, you're alive. I look another, you're dead. Blink and you're dead, eh? Like the Doctor said? I probably shouldn't make jokes like that, but I think you would think it was funny. I miss you, Kathy. I probably shouldn't tell anyone I'm writing you letters. They'll worry about me. But if time is something you can travel through, then somewhere, it's 1920 and you've just landed in Hull. And somewhere, it's 1921, and you've got a home where you can get letters, even if you can't get them from me. And somewhere, it's 1969 and the Doctor is sending me messages. I don't exist yet, but you do and you remember me. I wish you could tell me all those stories.

-Sally

 

10 January 1939

Dear Sally,

Sally is eighteen today, and all I can think of is you. How odd that you're still eighteen to me--well, you're not even eighteen; your mother is not even eighteen and you won't exist for so many years. But I've never been able to wrap my head around that, and so you are eighteen to me, and always will be. You'd think that I'd think of myself as your elder by now, but somehow, it doesn't work that way. When I think of you, I don't feel like I'm any particular age at all. Not young, not old, just … well, whatever it is that has stayed constant even as the world and I have changed.

I've persuaded Benjamin to leave London, move back up North. I told him it was because I was homesick, but really it's because I know that in a few years, it won't be safe to be here. And now he thinks I'm fragile and emotional and I can't contradict him without revealing the truth, and so I just let him think it and keep my own thoughts to myself. I have a family to look after.

All my love, Kathy

 

6 March 2008

Dear Kathy,

I took the day off today and left Larry with the shop. If you were really someone I was writing letters to, I guess I'd stop and explain that I own a shop with your brother and you'd be shocked and then I'd explain some more, and then I'd tell you that he fancies me and you'd laugh at me because he's your brother. I don't know what to think about it. I guess that's why I'm writing to you. I trust you. And I trust something about the space between us. That distance is the most solid, dependable thing I can imagine right now.

When I tell my other friends about Larry, they all groan and say that of course he fancies me and of course we should have been going out for months by now and they ask me what our problem is and I laugh and say that we're both shy and then I change the subject because it's not like I can tell them about the Angels. Until I gave away the folder (I'm glad I don't have to explain that one to you; just let it be), I'd told myself that as soon as I knew it was all really over, of course I'd go out with Larry. He's so kind and it's clear that he cares for me and owning the shop together seems like a good sign and what was so wrong with me that I couldn't at least go on a few dates? But Kathy, now that I have no excuse, all I'm thinking is this: why have I been trying so hard to talk myself into it?

-Sally

 

January 13, 1927

Dear Sally,

It's a bit odd, isn't it, to write to someone who doesn't exist yet, but to hell with it--my life's a bit odd, and so am I (my neighbors say), and there's nothing wrong with that, now is there? I have a daughter now--can you believe it? And she's named Sally! I wish you could meet her. I just had to write this down, you see. I think about you all the time. Mostly, I know you're worried about me. I must have given you such a fright, disappearing like that! More adventure than Sparrow and Nightingale bargained for, eh?

But I just have to tell you that I'm fine. Even if I can't get this to you. It kills me to think about you still running all over that old dump of a house, scared to death, when I'm safe and sound, just somewhere else. Most of the time, it doesn't even feel like somewhere else. Most of the time, it feels like this is all there is in the world, and I am happy. You're the only thing that pulls me back.

I like to think of Sally as your goddaughter. I'll be telling her stories about you.

-Kathy

 

16 March 2008

Dear Kathy,

I started a new photography project. Finally. At first, just after, it was too hard to even think about taking more photographs, and then, I was so busy with the shop… you know how it goes. But it's good to be back. And don't worry--no abandoned buildings this time. It's a self-portrait project. I'm photographing myself in places I remember from my past, doing things I remember doing there. Some of the results are really weird. In a good way.

This weekend, I went to see my parents and I took some photographs in the back garden. Do you remember that time we stayed out until nearly sunrise and still didn't want to go home, and so we sat together under a hawthorne tree and talked? I photographed myself there, whispering to an empty space beside me. You complained so much! It was all your idea, and then fifteen minutes after we sat down, you said you were freezing. Well, look at you now. Off on the strangest adventure we could have imagined.

-Sally

 

20 August 1930

Dear Sally,

I keep lists sometimes. They go like this:

-Radio plays

-Credit cards

-Mobile phones

-Finger waves

-The taste of lipstick (it's so odd here--you have no idea!)

They're all the things I save up for my letters to you, because my God, I can't exactly go to Benjamin and say that I can't wait till they invent the television. Or that I miss my iPod. I will say, however, that I've got quite the reputation as a storyteller! I tell the neighborhood children stories I remember from old episodes of EastEnders (edited for 1930, of course) and they all think I've just got the most extraordinary gift of imagination! Ha! I figure that's the sort of thing that can't do any harm, right? I mean, you know the thing about time travel in the movies--you step on a bug a million years ago and then you go back and everyone's got three eyes. Well, if you wake up one day with an extra eye or a robot hand or whatever, my apologies.

And don't worry--I know how these letters might make me look to everyone else here. I hide them well. This is the one secret thing in my life, and I must say, it's not so bad to have a secret like this. I mean a secret that you don't feel guilty keeping from everyone, lies that don't feel like lies at all because the truth is impossible. In fact, I rather like it.

Impossibly yours,

Kathy

 

20 March 2008

Dear Kathy,

Larry thinks I should move on. That's what he said: "Move on." He says I should "get on with my life" and "stop obsessing over the past." But what does that mean? Live as if time were a straight line? As if you were gone completely? If time were really like that, then nearly all of your life couldn't have even happened.

And what gave him the right to an opinion on it, anyway? I think he feels like we've bonded over our shared trauma or whatever, but it feels like ownership to me. I don't like it. It's been terrible at the shop, to be honest. I think he was never as patient as he acted. It's like he thought he just had to put in the time and be nice enough to me and he'd get a guaranteed girlfriend out of the deal, never mind what  _I_ might think of the arrangement.

I took a week off. I didn't tell him where I was going. I've stopped answering his calls. I've been having coffee with your grandson.

I asked Malcolm how well he knew you, and what you told him about me. I can't believe you actually told him the truth! Well, I suppose you had no choice, really. Not sure how else he would actually understand how important it was to deliver the letter. I asked him if he really believed it. He said it was a story he'd grown up with, a story he loved hearing as a child. How it made him feel special that his grandmother told him this one story that she didn't tell anyone else. But he went to the house that day mostly because it was a way to remember you. He didn't really believe it until he saw me. And I wish you could see the two of us! We meet for coffee, as if we were the most normal people in the world, and we believe utterly impossible things. He says his mother has some more of your stuff. He says that he'll find it for me. I asked him why he'd do so much for me, and he said that you used to tell lots of different stories about me, and now that he knows I'm real, he believes all the other stories, too. He didn't say much more than that, and I don't quite understand what he means, but I'm grateful, and I've learned to trust that some of the most important messages are ones you can't quite understand when you first receive them.

-Sally

 

12 February 1969

Dear Sally,

I've waited for this for all these years, but God, it terrifies me now that it's happened. I've met someone who says he knows you, who says he can contact you--and that he has to contact you. I don't understand it, but then, there's so much in my life I have not understood and that didn't make it any less true, now did it?

He came to see me, said he needed to talk to me alone. I almost gave him all my letters to you, the whole collection I've kept in a box under the bed for so long. But I didn't.

Sometime, I don't know when, you became more than just Sally. You were all of my secrets. Every last one of them. But if I had written those letters to someone who could actually read them, would that have happened? Would I have burdened anyone with such a weight? You will have a life to lead, my dear. At my darkest times, I wanted to pull you back here to be with me. I wrote pages and pages, as if the words could grab hold of you if I just stretched them out long enough. And then I shuddered at the monstrousness of what I desired and saw myself as a stone angel, haunting your steps.

I am writing different letters now. The Doctor tells me that I can save you, and that I have to write you a letter. I smiled at him, as if I'd never thought to do such a thing, as if it were his brilliant idea, and I told him that I'd see what I could do. I write and rewrite the same letter now, and I believe I will be doing this until the day I die. The one letter that you will receive. The one in which I let you go. The one that tells you that all is well, that you should not think of me so much, not the way I have thought of you. The letter in which I loved only Benjamin and wished for nothing more than the life I had. This, like all the others, is addressed only to the box of secrets. And so, safely, I sign it,

with love,

Kathy

 

14 April 2008

Dear Kathy,

How could you? You say you loved me all those years, but who the hell did you think I was? You thought I wouldn't want to read every last one of your letters? That I wouldn't want to be dragged out of the present from time to time? Jesus, Kathy! Don't you remember what I said to you about old things? What made you think I was the kind of person who wanted to live with shiny new things and be happy all the time and never look back?

In fairness, maybe you don't remember what I said. It was almost fifty years ago. For you. Feels like it for me, too, sometimes.

Well, I suppose it's clear to you by now that I've received your letters. The ones you didn't burn. Malcolm sent me a packet of them. He said he found them in his mother's house, which apparently had been your house first. I have to say that I've never been more grateful for your absentmindedness. I'm glad you lost some of the letters in a messy house over the years. I'm glad you couldn't burn them all.

I told Larry I wanted to sell him my half of the shop. I said that he could keep “Sparrow” in the name. It makes a good name, and you know, brand recognition and all that. It's the least I could do. I said I needed to figure some things out. Disappear for a while. It's a bit lonely, I admit, but I can't say much to most of my friends right now, either. All they'll do is tease me about Larry and act like something's wrong with me and they'll realise that I really am that weird and that it really is permanent. I can't exactly tell them that I can't date Larry after all because I'm in love with his dead sister. Who, by the way, is eighty-seven. And twenty. And every other age in between.

Anyway, I've been doing more photography. I'll need another job soon, so there's that to think of. I still have coffee with Malcolm. He's always looking for more letters and things in the old house. He promised to tell me whenever he finds anything new. And so I write to you in _full_ expectation of a reply.

I suppose this letter makes my life sound sort of dull and sad, but it doesn't feel that way to me. I feel more awake than I have in ages. I guess I want to tell you that your letters don't hurt me, not the way you feared. I want to feel the pull of something impossible. I want the present to be punctured sometimes. I wonder if the Doctor gave you the same explanation he gave me: "Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey?" Ring a bell? It sounded so stupid the first time I heard it, but I rather like the phrase now. Wobbly. The world feels wobbly to me now, in the best possible way. Like all the sudden, something else could shift out of place and I'll be looking at everything sideways or upside down or from some new angle nobody's invented yet. Time feels like something that pulls on me, it's true, but it's something I pull on in return.

I've never had an impossible love affair before. How about we give it a try?

Eagerly awaiting your next,

Sally


End file.
